Tag Archives: Windows 7

If you have used Firefox the Firefox 3.6 beta, you have probably noticed that Mozilla has introduced support for Windows 7 taskbar thumbnails. Firefox 3.6 allows you to directly select a tab from the taskbar. This is similar to how Internet Explorer 8 behaves in Windows 7. Some people love this behaviour while others find it annoying. I happen to belong to the latter group. I am a heavy multi-tasker and often have dozens of open tabs organised into multiple windows. Taskbar tab previews doesn’t make any distinction between tabs from different windows and is a major productivity bump.

If you find taskbar tab previews irritating, here is a quick way to get rid of them.

Windows 7 contains dozens of hidden diagnostic utilities. In the past, we have shown you how to quickly access some of those utilities. Today, we will take a look at another hidden gem in Windows 7.

Powercfg.exe is a command line utility which allows users to control power settings. It has been present in Windows for a long time. However, in Windows 7 Powercfg.exe includes some additional features. One of them, is the ability to create neatly formatted Energy efficiency reports.

In order to generate this report, start the command prompt with Administrator privileges. The quickest way to do so, is to type cmd in the Start Menu and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

The command Prompt window should point to the \Windows\System32 directory. In order to build the Energy Efficiency report, you need to simply type the following command and press enter.

powercfg -energy -output C:\Power_Mg_Report.html

Here C:\Power_Mg_Report.html is the location, where the report will be saved. Feel free to use any other location.

Windows will inspect your system’s behaviour for about a minute and then generate the report. The report will indicate all potentially problematic settings and recommend steps to improve your system’s battery backup time.

One of the many new features in Windows 7 is Aero Peek. Just hover the mouse pointer over the extreme right edge of your taskbar and Windows will reveal the desktop. To be honest, I don’t really like Aero Peek in fact I find it pretty much pointless. But, a lot of people seem to love it. If you indeed find Aero Peek beneficial, here is a small tip to make it more convenient.

In order to avoid accidental triggering, Aero Peek doesn’t get activated immediately. Instead you need to wait for about half a second. This delay is mostly unnecessary and can be annoying. Fortunately for us, it is quite easy to make Aero Peek trigger instantly.

Type regedit in the Start Menu or the Run (Win + R) box. This will launch the Windows Registry Editor.

Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime from the Edit Menu.

Double click on this entry to edit its value. Set the base to Decimal and enter 0 as the value. You can actually enter any delay value you wish. Just remember that the unit of time used here is millisecond (1000ms=1s).

That’s it. All you need to do now is logoff or restart to see the changes.

If you don’t want to go through all this trouble, you can also download this registry script. Simply double click on the script (.reg file) to apply the tweak.

Of course, if you don’t like Aero Peek and find it pointless, you should disable it entirely. Right click on an empty spot in the taskbar and select Properties. Uncheck the box next to Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop to disable Aero Peek.

Windows has come a long way since the days of Win 9x both in terms of features and appearance. Windows Aero has finally made Windows sexy. However, if you are still not satisfied, then Taskbar Texturizer may be just what you need to add a bit of zing to your Windows installation.

Taskbar Texturizer is a portable utility which does one thing add textures to your taskbar. The application itself is straight forward to use. Taskbar Texturizer can use any image as your taskbar background. To help you get started, it comes preloaded with two dozen textures. To be honest, some of the included textures look pretty cool in Windows 7. Taskbar Texturizer also supports transparent textures, which allows you to come up with some fairly decent looking taskbar skins by playing with the with the opacity settings.

Techie Buzz Verdict

The application does have some usability issues and doesn’t confirm to Windows application development standards. For example, double clicking the system tray icon have any even associated with it. This coupled with the fact that Taskbar Texturizer doesn’t create any taskbar entry, leads to the application window getting lost among other open windows, once it looses focus. It also seems to have some compatibility issues with Winsnap. However, these are minor issues. Taskbar Texturizer does what it is supposed to. It uses very little resources and provides a quick and easy way to spice up your system.

Windows 7 taskbar has been receiving rave reviews ever since it was first demonstrated by Microsoft. Recently, it was even voted as the best application dock by Lifehacker readers. However, like most things in this world, it is not perfect. In the past we told you how to enhance Windows 7 taskbar using Taskbar Overlord. Today, we will take a look at another similar application – 7 Taskbar Tweaker.

7 Taskbar Tweaker is a simple portable utility which is functionally similar to Taskbar Overlord. It allows you to close application windows by simply middle clicking on them. It can also change the default left click behavior for grouped windows. By default, left clicking on a grouped button brings up the thumbnail list. But, this is pointless since hovering over the button also has the same effect. With 7 Taskbar Tweaker you can set the default left click behavior to “cycle through open windows”. This is a minor change, but once you get used to this, you will start wondering why Microsoft didn’t make this the default behavior in the first place. 7 Taskbar Tweaker also supports a few other tweaks, including disabling jumplists, thumbnail previews and application grouping.

Techie Buzz Verdict

7 Taskbar Tweaker is a simple tweaking utility which has some really useful tweaks. Its biggest strength is simplicity. It did everything it promised without any fuss. Give it a try if you want to improve you productivity by fine-tuning the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Important Do not use this resolution if the upgrade stops responding at a percentage other than 62% or if the log entries are not logged. For more information about how to open the Seupact.log file, see the More Information section.
To resolve this problem, follow these steps:

Restart the computer. Then, your computer will roll back to Windows Vista.

Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.

On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.

Under System variables, click New.

Type MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS in the Variable name field.

Type IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll in the Variable value field.

Click OK three times to close the dialog boxes.

Start the upgrade installation again.

Performing these steps should help you resolve the issues, if the Windows 7 upgrade is always stuck at 62%.

A interesting post at the Neowin forums had many people talking about how Apple posted sneaky ads on some really lucrative keywords including Windows 7 downloadand download Windows 7. The Ads were titled as “Upgrading to Windows 7″ and pointed to www.apple.com/getamac.

So is Apple really afraid of Windows 7 stealing their thunder, or was that just a sneaky attempt to get genuine future customers of Microsoft to buy a Mac?

I elaborated on wasabove, as the sneaky ads from Apple are no longer displayed when you search for those keywords, at-least on the US edition of Google.

So is this a sign of desperation? Or, is Apple just hot in their pants after Windows 7 launched? Please note, this is not a anti-Apple rant, it is just appalling that someone could post such sneaky ads. Hopefully, Microsoft would not start posting ads on Get a Mackeywords now :-).

Windows 7 is out. But, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft can start relaxing. A lot of corporates tend to wait for the first service pack before upgrading to the latest Windows operating system. So, it’s no wonder that Microsoft likes to start working on the service pack, immediately after finishing an Operating system.

Wzor.net, which became notorious for leaking Windows 7 internal builds, is now reporting that Microsoft is planning on releasing the first beta of Windows 7 SP1 in January, 2010. If this is indeed true, then it would mean a gap of about 6 months between the RTM (which was finalised on July 22nd, 2009) and the service pack. This may appear to be too soon, but keep in mind that Windows 7 SP1 has already been spotted in the wild.

According to Wzor, Microsoft plans on releasing two beta builds and two release candidate (RC) builds for Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Windows 7 SP1 should be ready for OEMs by the summer (June-August) and would be available to end users by autumn (September-November).

Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft made the Windows key more useful with some excellent shortcut keys. In Windows 7, you can use the Windows key in combination with numbers 1-9 to cycle between the applications in the taskbar.